Case Number 04791: Small Claims Court

ZATOICHI: THE FESTIVAL OF FIRE

The Charge

Your death is reserved to my sword.

The Case

The blind masseur sets out on his 21st adventure in this color outing from
Daiei by way of Toho, brought to us by the fine importing specialists at
AnimEigo. Katsu Shintaro stars as usual as Ichi, the skilled, sanguine, and
seemingly superhuman round-faced blind swordsman who makes his way among the
lower echelons of 19th-century Japan's crime-ridden countryside and villages.
This time Ichi has fallen among a community that deals in women. When a customer
refuses to pay Ichi because he's too smitten with one of the subjects of an
auction -- a geisha who happens to be the wife of a powerful Shogunate retainer
-- Ichi decides to take a hand of interference. Using nothing but his
frightening masked and tongue-waggling visage, he rescues the lady and spirits
her away to seeming safety, although she thinks at first, quite naturally, that
Ichi is merely another bandit out to claim her. She steals Ichi's coin purse
(with his tacit permission) and sneaks away, but a mysterious swordsman (Tatsuya
Nakadai) arrives at the scene and murders the woman without a word, displaying a
remarkable ability to hide from Ichi's famously acute senses. Upon finding her
corpse, Ichi displays genuine regret at having rescued her. His urge to heroism
has cost the woman what might not have been a good life, but at least was a
life. Sobered, Ichi moves on and into a large village run by the "Shogun of
the Underworld." He's introduced to a young pimp (played by an actor known
as Peter), whom Ichi assumes will be a burly, argumentative type. Instead, the
pimp turns out to be a highly effeminate young man with a single facial
expression similar to that of Snuffy Smith. This pimp becomes something of a
friend to Ichi, who tries to mend the fellow's ways and set him on a more
productive path; when they get stuck together after some complications, though,
the lad reveals a desire for something more than friendship, making for a
humorous scene as Ichi tries to wriggle out of the situation without hurting the
boy's feelings unduly and embittering him.

The plot is concerned with three showdowns of sorts. We have the mysterious
and pervasive samurai who has taken it upon himself to haunt and then kill Ichi.
We have the Shogun of the Underworld (Masayuki Mori), who like Ichi is blind and
has learned to compensate for his sightlessness with abilities seeming to border
on the mystical. And, quite unusually for an Ichi film, we have a love interest!
Yes, Zatoichi falls in love in this movie and undergoes a musical love montage
sequence! Granted, this love may have a dark secret, and the pair's idyll is
interrupted by a husband and wife comedy team who may well be known as the
Battling Bicker-sans. The crimelords' attempts to take out Ichi do not
disappoint either, with one amazing scene (featuring a wonderfully goofy music
cue from Isao Tomita) where Ichi must fight, nude, against about thirty
assailants, also nude, in a bathhouse. This scene is completely insane, a far
cry from the somber beginnings of the Ichi series, but damn if it isn't a hoot
and a half. Ichi leaps around, covering his privates with an urn lid and sending
his foes flying all about the slippery room, finally emerging through a cloud of
blood out of the large tub where the fight began. No full frontal nudity, of
course, as the movie plays games with the grand tradition of convenient genital
obfuscation. As always, Ichi not only fights but gambles, this time refusing a
loan from the local boss in favor of taking his money the old-fashioned way. In
the end, Ichi must fight his way through a massive conflagration on an island in
the center of a small lake, in a spectacular confrontation with the Shogun of
the Underworld.

My experience with Ichi had before been limited to only a few of the very
early black and white entries in the series; to say that this one contrasts with
them is something of an understatement. There's a massive difference in tone and
the movie seems less concerned with linear plot. On the other hand, the action
is much more elaborate and the entertainment factor is ramped up a good bit. I
enjoyed this movie pretty well, although it did seem to wander a lot. The
strange bickering couple seemed to have no relevance; from that I am presuming
that they were reprised characters from a previous Ichi film or maybe even some
other source entirely. One thing that I did find a bit strange was the choice to
allow the color-coding of the subtitles (an excellent way to distinguish between
speakers) to overwhelm the traditional top-to-bottom display. It's not bad once
you get used to it, but the first time you suddenly see a subtitle appear
above the previous one, it's a bit disconcerting.

AnimEigo has not fallen down a bit in the quality of their releases of the
Ichi films. The anamorphically enhanced print is sharp and strong, and the color
is very rich but not oversaturated in the least. My only quibble with the video
is the embedded 3:2 pulldown; as I've noted elsewhere, the player should create
the pulldown. In this case, the results are not too destructive, and the video
quality is otherwise so good as to make this both a shame in that it could have
been just that much better, but also no reason to avoid the disc. Audio is
presented in the original monaural mix and is clear with the unusual Tomita
score coming through brightly. Extras are the usual for an AnimEigo Zatoichi or
Kozure Okami release: a small assortment of trailers for the films of both
series, a thorough credits listing in English, and helpful historical liner
notes. The subtitles, as usual, are offered in both a full translation and a
more minimal version to allow a viewer to follow the story while becoming fully
immersed in the picture. I preferred the full subtitles; the minimal ones were a
bit too minimal for my taste. For instance, the minimal subtitles
completely ignore the long text and voiceover that opens the film. Overall,
however, the idea seems solid.

AnimEigo has once again done a thorough and respectful job of presenting the
classics of Japanese swordplay pictures with Zatoichi and the Festival of
Fire. All parties involved with the creation of both movie and disc are free
to go, although a small fine will be levied as an incentive to provide
progressive transfers in the future. We stand in recess!